Cinematic narration use none none generating todeploy none with noneean13 generator c# tutorial they are devoid of literary v none none alue. Given the large number of possible actions available to the player, a good plot response would require the development of a computer that not only was conscious, but also had the consciousness of a creative writer. Absent the development of such a creative computer, interactive storytelling of any interest is not possible.

77 Though the branching problem is invariably discussed as a computational one, it is in fact a general problem for interactive storytelling and so arises for human storytellers too. If the requirement is that, no matter what the player does, the storyteller must come up with an artistically good response immediately, even creative writers would very likely fail to rise to that challenge. The branching problem is real, since there is a trade-o , given limited artistic resources, between making storytelling more interactive and having each individual storyline be artistically interesting.

However, it does not follow that interactive storytelling is of little artistic worth. First, from the fact that one trades o interactivity against narrative interest, one cannot conclude that no point on the trade-o line has artistic value. For instance, even if one conceded that complete choice by the audience would make it in practice impossible to produce any coherent story, it would not follow that restricting audience choice to some degree would result in the narrative lacking all value.

If Otis decides that teddy spontaneously explodes, he will likely be told not to be silly, rather than make Jane feel obliged to come up with an interesting outcome. And Jane can still produce an interesting story while denying Otis untrammelled choice. Some choice is required for a story to be interactive: but that does not require, either logically or artistically, that all choices be permitted.

In general the interactive storyteller should engage in, to continue the arboreal metaphor, pruning.78 This may involve limiting the range of input options available to the audience; it may also involve restricting the structure of the story the widespread use of levels in videogames ensures that, even though there are several ways the story may proceed in each level, at the start of a new level each player enters at the same point, no matter what her previous actions.79 Second, while it is plausible that increasing audience choice makes it harder to make each individual storyline artistically interesting, because of the resulting artistic demands, it does not follow that overall narrative value diminishes.

For narrative ability need not be shown merely by generating. Developing with Visual Studio .NET 77 79. Poole, Trigger Happy, chapter none none 5. 78 Crawford, Interactive Storytelling , discusses pruning. Aarseth, Quest Games as Post-Narrative Discourse , describes this as a string-of-pearls structure, where choice is possible within the pearls but not within the string.

. A Philosophy of Cinematic Art
rewarding and detailed indivi none none dual plotlines, but might instead be evinced through making a rich and satisfying structure of plots that develop from a wide variety of inputs it might, that is, be displayed by constructing an overall architectonic of possible plots, rather than through developing the intricacies of an individual plot. Appreciating this structure would require playing through the various possibilities that it generates and comparing them to each other. So the object of aesthetic appreciation would shift in part to the story tree, not just appreciation of each individual storyline.

As noted, Poole argues that there is a particular problem for computational implementations of interactive storytelling, since only a creative writer could, when confronted with any of an inde nitely large number of actions by a player, come up with an interesting plot continuation in response to those actions; and he sees no prospect of a computer attaining true creativity. However, this argument sets the bar for an interesting plot extremely high, requiring it to be something of very great interest or be of extreme literary value.80 But at the level of everyday interesting plots, the great majority of them in commercial cinema are generic, as witnessed by the plethora of handbooks on how to write screenplays.

These look like just the sort of plots where heuristic algorithms might do an e ective job. Fa ade, which employs AI techniques, demonstrates that interactive storytelling by computer is not just possible but can also have artistic worth. Its creators, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, describe it as an interactive drama , which generates a situation that is akin to being onstage with two live actors who are motivated to make a dramatic situation happen .

81 A typical playing lasts about 20 minutes (though the range can vary between about 5 and 25 minutes). The player plays a friend of a couple, Grace and Trip, whose marriage is teetering on the edge of collapse. The graphics are 3D with only basic rendering; but the power of the work depends on the interaction between the player, and Grace and Trip.

The player sees the apartment from a rst-person point of view, can walk freely around it, pick up and move some objects, including a drink that Trip may o er him, and can hug or kiss Grace and Trip. The player can also type in whatever text he likes and that text appears on screen. The couple responds to it as well as to many of the player s make-believe actions, including his hugs, kisses and movements towards or away from them.

Their response is. At one point, Poole seems to irt with this idea: he dryly remarks that It is hardly surprising, though obscurely disappointing, that no one has tried to make a videogame out of Nabokov s Pale Fire (Trigger Happy, p. 95). Mateas and Stern, Fa ade , p.